Orc accent.

[Eluchíl]

Anyone else notice that many orcs have a cockney accent?

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

But of course. Everyone knows that Cockneys are evil, and that Orcs are fond of rhyming slang.

Actually, Orc English looks to me rather more like a generic English thug dialect. I don't think it's supposed to represent one group in particular. Tolkien tries to make their language as rough, brutal and uncivilised as he can, and just happens to end up with something Londonish (actually more Saaf Lundun than Cockney). All a complete coincidence, I'm sure.

[davem]

Well, not all of them - Brian Rosebury makes an interesting point in 'Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon:

With the Orcs, whose speech is intended to suggest a closed militaristic culture of hatred & cruelty, Tolkien draws on a number of models. Indeed, there are at least three different dialogue-types for Orcs, corresponding to differences of rank and of tribe.. (None of them, incidentally, is ‘working-class’, except in the minds of critics who - themselves, it seems, unconsciously equating ‘degraded language’ with ‘working-class’ language - have convinced themselves that the Orcs’ malign utterances betray Tolkien’s disdain for ‘mere working people’.) The comparatively cerebral Grishnakh, for example, talks like a melodrama villain, or a public school bully.

The Uruk-hai, Grishnakh’s rivals, are an arrogant warrior horde, not without a certain esprit de corps, and are given to yelling war cries. (‘Bring out your King! We are the fighting Uruk-hai! We will fetch him from his hole, if he does not come. Bring out your skulking king!’) Lastly, the dialogue between individual Orcs at moments of animosity (which is most of the time) is brutal & squalid in a rather underpowered way.

If Tolkien is reduced here to stylised snarls, & bowdlerised suggestions of excremental vituperation, one recognises his difficulty: more overt obscenity & violence would not so much have offended twentieth-century sensibilities as have evoked, incongruously, the world of the twentieth-century crime novel. Most readers, engrossed in the narrative, will absorb this functional, & sufficiently expressive, dialogue without being unduly detained by its artificiality or derivativeness.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Having just discussed Appendix F, I have Tolkien's comments on orc speech fresh in my mind. Here they are:

Originally Posted by Tolkien

Orcs and Trolls spoke as they would, without love of words or things; and their language was actually more degraded and filthy than I have shown it. I do not suppose that any will wish for a closer rendering, though models are easy to find. Much the same sort of talk can still be heard among the orc-minded; dreary and repetitive with hatred and contempt, too long removed from good to retain even verbal vigour, save in the ears of those to whom only the squalid stounds strong.

I would imagine that his thoughts apply not only to the actual words, but also to the accent with which they're spoken.

[Bêthberry]

I am reminded of the experience of an acquaintance of mine, a not-unsophisticated Canadian woman of a certain age who spoke clear, unaccented Canuck and who had married an English ex-pat.

When on a return trip to the UK, she frequently noted that hubby could be drawn into a huff by "the bullying verbal antics of that public school boy", over mere trifles of accent. Yet she was never made a target, that she could tell.

It does seem a particularly English thing to have private jokes about language.

Originally Posted by Brian Rosebury via davem

The Uruk-hai, Grishnakh’s rivals, are an arrogant warrior horde, not without a certain esprit de corps, and are given to yelling war cries. (‘Bring out your King! We are the fighting Uruk-hai! We will fetch him from his hole, if he does not come. Bring out your skulking king!’)

I know it is historically incorrect, but whenever I read these orc lines I am always reminded of Monty Python's The Holy Grail and the "Bring out your dead lines."

Now, about those beavers in the Narnia movie ....

[Lalwendë]

It always makes me laugh when I see or hear language used that's supposed to represent vulgar language but without going the whole hog of actually using those words. Hence you get some interesting curse words, such as "sugar" or "bloomin" or "fup" - and you even have to use them on here, which is quite understandable, it being a family forum. But when it comes to say a soap opera, it can be hilarious. I always think fondly of the euphemisms they used to conjour up on Brookside (a 'gritty' soap set in Liverpool); when they did a late night episode they 'let rip' with all the effing and jeffing they could, though.

Bill Bryson wrote about an article in one of the broadsheet newspapers which was trying to trace the first uses of certain swear words in the media. It managed to do so without ever actually printing said words.

So when Tolkien has Shagrat say of someone "the dung", I think we know what he really means to say. Of course, Tolkien was not the sort of person we might expect to use swear words, so when representing those who use vulgar language he was quite limited in what he could use.